Nita Lakra

Cadaverine: A lysine catabolite involved in plant growth and development

The cadaverine (Cad) a diamine, imino compound produced as a lysine catabolite is also implicated in growth and development of plants depending on environmental condition. This lysine catabolism is catalyzed by lysine decarboxylase, which is developmentally regulated. However, the limited role of Cad in plants is reported, this review is tempted to focus the metabolism and its regulation, transport and responses, interaction and cross talks in higher plants. The Cad varied presence in plant parts/products suggests it as a potential candidate for taxonomic marker as well as for commercial exploitation along with growth and development.

Investigating Abiotic Stress Response Machinery in Plants: The Metabolomic Approach

Salinity is one of the major environmental factors which limit the rice production worldwide. Rice (Oryza sativa) is one of the major staple food crops for more than half of the world’s population in addition to one of the most salt-sensitive cereals. It is estimated that one fifth of the irrigated agriculture land is already affected by high soil salinity, which warrants innovations for the agricultural production in marginal saline lands. To overcome lower productivity, it is important to study the compounds which are the “by-products” of stress metabolism, stress signal transduction, or the molecules that are part of the acclimation response in crop plants. In this regard, “metabolomics” – the study of metabolites – may contribute significantly toward improving our understanding of the salinity stress response in plants. In the present chapter, we describe various targeted and nontargeted approaches as they have been used for the study of metabolites in various plant species in response to various abiotic stresses. One of the major conclusions, which can be drawn based on these studies, is that a large subset of sugars and amino acids are upregulated during salinity stress with a decrease in the levels of various organic acids. Under salinity stress, maintenance of cellular osmoticum by accumulation of a range of osmolytes seems to be a universal response in plants. We propose that the outcome of metabolomic studies in conjunction with other omics-based studies may pave way for dissecting out the complex traits such as salinity tolerance.

Fascinating Fungal Endophytes Role and Possible Beneficial Applications: An Overview

Plants constitute immense and diverse niches for endophytic organisms, and their associations are well reported by many researchers. Certain microorganisms like endophytes prevail in the interior portion of plants, like roots, shoots, leaves, and stems, and do not harm the host plant. Fungi pose symbiotic relationship with plants, showing diversity in enrichment of resources and habitats. Even though these plant microbial interactions were reported from ancient years, an understanding of the mechanisms enabling these microorganisms to interact with host plants is still a dilemma. Unrevealing such unknown interaction pathways and signaling would be a crucial step in biotechnology which would probably lead to the production of different unique and novel compounds. Such compound may have the ultimate role in various applications in future biotechnology. Similarly, the potential of many isolated fungal endophytes has also not been studied well. Hence, an attempt has been made to coordinate the possibilities of usage of isolated endophytes in this chapter. Their uniqueness and specificity were studied with solid-state fermentation and submerged fermentation at a wide range of pH and temperature and few secondary metabolites and industrially important enzymes; its various applications and the common fungi used for such studies have also been discussed in this chapter.

Crop Genetic Engineering: An Approach to Improve Fungal Resistance in Plant System

Fungal disease in crop plants from the past two decades has seen to be increasing which is recognized as a serious threat to food security worldwide. It is difficult for plant to survive under these unfavorable conditions which cause an unprecedented number of fungal and fungal-like diseases which are the most common kind of plant disease. Various approaches such as use of chemical pesticides and other synthetic molecules have been used to control the fungal infections in crop plants. Different transgenic plants have been developed by introducing various genes responsible for resistance in opposition to fungal pathogens. Genes of the enzymes responsible for cell wall degradation are frequently applied to generate transgenic plants for fungal resistance. This chapter mainly emphasizes on how transgenic approach helps to confer plant resistance toward fungal diseases.